Commissioners to consider Seven Falls ‘action plan', school property

Tuesday

County commissioners will consider Wednesday how to spend a $6 million settlement it won from a bond company that insured infrastructure work at the bankrupted Seven Falls development.

County commissioners will consider Wednesday how to spend a $6 million settlement it won from a bond company that insured infrastructure work at the bankrupted Seven Falls development.The money from Lexon Insurance Co. and Synovus Bank must be used for completing subdivision site work left unfinished when developer Seven Falls LLC went bankrupt three years ago and defaulted on a performance bond, county officials said.County Planning Director Anthony Starr will recommend that commissioners adopt a three-year “action plan” that focuses on quickly addressing erosion and infrastructure needs within the abandoned 1,398-acre development site in Etowah. If adopted by the board, the plan includes:--Waiving a “request for qualifications,” a selection process normally used by commissioners to review and rank potential engineers for a project based on their competence, not their price. State law recommends that counties go through that process, Starr said, but there is an exception in the statute that would allow work to begin sooner by waiving the RFQ. “The quicker we can get started with this work, the better,” Starr said.--Contracting with William G. Lapsley & Associates, an engineering firm used by Seven Falls developers, to complete design work for the roads, water system and sewage treatment required under the bond. A draft agreement with Lapsley would save the county as much as $450,000, versus hiring a new engineer unfamiliar with the project. “They've already done a considerable amount of design work there, so they can complete it more quickly so we can act faster to address soil and erosion issues on the property,” Starr said.--Authorizing Starr to secure bids for work to re-establish soil erosion measures and “rough grading” within the Seven Falls area affected by the bond (which excludes the golf course).“Completing the bonded work is going to address a significant portion of the soil erosion work,” Starr said. That's because much of the erosion is associated with roads the developers graded but never finished. Replacing silt fences, cleaning out sediment catchment basins and maintaining road surfaces will mitigate further damage, he said.--Giving county planners the go-ahead to negotiate with the Etowah Sewer Company, a for-profit utility, about pumping waste to their sewer lines from the Seven Falls site. Developers at Seven Falls originally planned to build a new wastewater treatment plant that would discharge treated effluent into the French Broad River. Securing environmental permits for such a package plant would take at least 15 months, Starr said. So he's suggesting commissioners look at pumping waste from a “lift station” in Seven Falls to an Etowah Sewer line on Highway 64. Getting permission to do that would take “a few weeks” for roughly the same cost as a package plant, he said.--Allowing county staff to “segment bids.” The settlement gave the county $6 million, or 125 percent of the infrastructure's estimated 2007 cost of $4.8 million. But when engineering estimates for the bond were calculated, Starr said, they didn't contemplate running electric lines into the Seven Falls property because Duke Power didn't charge for that then. Two years ago, Duke got permission from the state to charge for line extensions and now the county faces $400,000 in unforeseen fees. That, plus “substantial erosion on site,” means the $6 million might be insufficient to complete all the bonded infrastructure. “So we're asking the board to allow us to segment the bids so we can scale back some of the improvements if we have to,” Starr said. By placing bid alternatives in their package, county staff can break the infrastructure project into smaller pieces so that certain phases could be more easily adjusted “to get us within budget,” Starr said. Local environmentalists have urged the county to use portions of the settlement funds to address erosion and sediment build-up along Willow Creek. But county officials said the best they'll be able to do with the settlement money is prevent further damage.“Our hands are tied in what we can do with it,” said Vice Chairman Bill O'Connor. “But I want our local environmental community to understand, the first step to mitigating the damage that's been done is to stop the damage. Which means putting in the roads and addressing drainage, and that stops the problem from getting any worse. After that, the next step is wastewater.”Starr said it may take until next summer for construction to begin on the infrastructure within Seven Falls. He anticipates the negotiation with Etowah Sewer will be complete by February, and design plans and permits should be in hand by spring or summer of 2013.If that schedule holds, the project should be finished sometime between February and August of 2015, he said.In other business, the Board of Commissioners will discuss the possibility of the county purchasing the former Hendersonville Christian School property on South Grove Street for recreational purposes. The 9.45-acre property includes three school buildings totaling 28,000 square feet, a large gymnasium suitable for adult basketball games and an athletic field large enough to accommodate adult and youth soccer competitions. The site is currently listed for $1.2 million, but several commissioners have said that price would have to drop significantly for the county to consider buying it.“We've been interested in this property for some time,” Chairman Tommy Thompson said Monday. “We want to bring it out in the open, bring it before the people and see where all of us stand on that. That's not saying we've Ok'd anything, but we're pursuing the possibility.”Reach Axtell at 828-694-7860 or than.axtell@blueridgenow.com.

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